June 25, 2015

"A Tax on Bunny Rabbits" premiered at the 2011 Ottawa International Animation Festival. This short film is all text animation, ascii style! No bunnies were harmed in the making of this film. See more of my work at oxen.tv and riotsquad.tv

Mike and Matt Chapman—better known by the nom de web The Brothers Chaps—have been entertaining the Internet since the turn of the millennium, presaging the rise of web video through their popular animated series Homestar Runner. The cartoon that launched a thousand memes and online catchphrases, Homestar Runner entered a semipermanent hiatus in 2010 (though it’s since sprung back to life, “sporadically and without warning”), during which the Chapmans explored other creative avenues—including a development deal with Disney Television Animation.

Now the fruits of that deal (beyond the Chaps’ contributions to Disney’s Gravity Falls and Wander Over Yonder) can be harvested: Two More Eggs, a series of 40 original shorts that will debut online before airing on Disney XD later this year.

Wednesday morning, director Steve Martino and art director Nash Dunnigan took the stage at France’s Annecy Intl. Animated Film Festival to share the elaborate thought process that went into respecting the legacy of Schulz — known by the nickname “Sparky” by friends and members of the production. And who better to tackle the challenge than the helmer who’d taken such care in adapting “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who,” embracing computer-animation technology while staying true to Theodor Geisel’s original designs?

According to Martino, nearly everyone he encounters responds to news of “The Peanuts Movie” with the same concern: “Don’t screw it up!” But the challenge is far more complicated than “Peanuts” fans might think. “It’s the complexity of getting something to the screen that looks so simple,” said Martino, whose crew had to develop a computer-generated animation technique that preserved the hand-drawn “soft wiggle” pen line of Schulz’s strips, while translating the characters into a full-color, stereoscopic 3D world.

“I want to find that pen line in everything we do,” told his team. Easier said than done for an ensemble of 14 bobble-headed characters whose faces, the Blue Sky artists quickly learned, Schulz had drawn in just six different poses: profile left and right, facing not-quite-forward (turned a quarter left or right), looking “extreme up” (nose on top) or “extreme down” (nose all the way down).

When it came to Charlie Brown, they found that his features changed every time he turns his head: When Charlie Brown swivels his face forward, his nose moves up, but his ears move down, meaning the animators couldn’t build a single virtual model for the character, but instead had to build separate models for each of his poses, then cycle through them, dropping the “in-betweening” (or smoothing stage) typical of computer animation. Rather than using the popular bejeweled eyes seen in most CG toons, the “Peanuts” characters’ peepers retain a certain inky quality. So does the curlicue of hair in the center of Charlie Brown’s forehead, and many of the visual effects, from rain to the cloud of dust that follows Pigpen everywhere he goes.

Though working in 3D, the animators also had to reign in the stereoscopic aspect of what they were doing, using perspective in the backgrounds, but limiting it with the characters. When it comes to Charlie Brown’s head, “It’s got dimensionality, but you can’t have his face become this big basketball reaching out into the audience,” Martino explained. “So we embraced old techniques from 2D animation.” Motion blur doesn’t work in the film’s “snappy” style (inspired not only by Schulz’s drawings, but also the “Peanuts” TV specials directed by Bill Melendez), so they used “multiples,” where movement is conveyed by duplicating certain elements in the same frame.

The many TV specials also suggested how Martino should handle the characters’ voices: The entire kid cast is voiced by actual children, aged 7 to 12, rather than easily marketable stars, while the adults’ speech will be handled as a muffled trombone, as it was for television. When Snoopy “speaks,” the production plans to use vintage recordings of Melendez’s voice.

“You look at Snoopy, and he’s the ultimate Picasso challenge,” Martino said. “He’s got two eyes on the side of his face.” The helmer showed the crowd an example of Snoopy in profile with both eyes, nose and mouth all facing the viewer. “We’re animating for the camera,” he explained, rotating the model 180 degrees so audiences could see what the other side of his head looked like in the same shot: completely blank, except for the toon beagle’s appealing white fur, more like a plush animal than a real dog.

Schulz drew more than 18,000 comic strips over the course of “Peanuts’” 50-year run, which provided a direct reference for any visual question, no matter how small. That also applied for the addition of Fifi, a French poodle mentioned in Snoopy’s fantasies, but never before seen. (She was designed by synthesizing traits from other animals Schulz had drawn during his career.)

Like any cartoon character, from Mickey Mouse to Calvin and Hobbes, designs changed over the years, so the crew tried to focus on the way Snoopy and the dog’s best friends looked during the strip’s “golden era” in the ’80s and ’90s. “It was never a case where we had to imagine what something looked like,” Martino said. “If you go back to the comic strip, the answers were always there. You just had to do the work.”

Each fall The Center for Cartoon Studies invites 20 of the world's most promising aspiring cartoonists and graphic novelists to the ramshackle village of White River Junction, Vermont for a no-holds-barred education in comics. Those who complete the two-year program earn a Master of Fine Arts degree and are ready to face the uncertainty of a career in one of the world’s most labor-intensive, drudgery-inducing art forms. CARTOON COLLEGE is their story.

Featuring a who's-who of the biggest names in literary comics, including Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Scott McCloud, Jason Lutes, and James Sturm, among many others, as well as the music of Beulah, Archers of Loaf, Portastatic, Tortoise, Tokyo Police Club, Quinn Marston, The Hot IQs, Fire Tapes, and an original score by Jason Zumpano, CARTOON COLLEGE is a fast-paced look at a school where the stakes are high and spilled ink and tears are often the only reward.

June 10, 2015

A fictitious commercial which will be shown in the movie "Sky Sharks".
In the style of paper cut-out animation combined with real objects, all done in-camera.
Shot with Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Dragonframe.
Assistant Director and Typography by Moana Rom
Voiced by Arril Johnson
Music by André Rössler and Isabel Greiwe

June 03, 2015

June 02, 2015

Vice talked to the 70-year-old director about the challenges he faced in recreating the Wasteland, his new crop of iconic characters, the insane practical stunts and why it took 17 years to make this movie happen.

Film Editor Margaret Sixel was given over 480 hours of footage to create MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The final edit ran 120 minutes and consisted of 2700 individual shots. That's 2700 consecutive decisions that must flow smoothly and immerse the viewer. 2700 decisions that must guide and reveal the story in a clear and concise manner. One bad cut can ruin a moment, a scene or the whole film.

One of the many reasons MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is so successful as an action film is the editing style. By using "Eye Trace" and "Crosshair Framing" techniques during the shooting, the editor could keep the important visual information vital in one spot...the Center of the Frame. Because almost every shot was center framed, comprehending the action requires no hunting of each new shot for the point of interest. The viewer doesn't need 3 or 4 frames to figure out where to look. It's like watching an old hand-drawn flip book whiz by. It's always in the same spot!

Collider talks with Director George Miller about deleted scenes, other projects past and future:

George Miller and actor Hugh Keays-Byrne participated in a live-stream Q&A moderated by maverick filmmaker/fan Robert Rodriguez: